Dinner stats

6 feet: average distance of thrown food

75%: percentage of Dylan's body covered with food

6 minutes: amount of time we have to eat before the head-banging, food-throwing, red-faced tantrum begins

16: number of times Kelsie laughed at him and egged him on

2: number of times we caught sippy cup in mid-air

3: number of times we DIDN'T manage to catch the sippy cup in mid-air (I know, I know ... why do we keep giving it back to him?? Because without that our 6 minutes to eat gets shortened dramatically.)

2: number of times we had to shampoo his hair to get all the food out of it (and of course last night was the night he decided to hate the bath)



The worst part of this is that it was Sloppy Joe night and we knew better! We looked at each other right before giving him his food and said "this is a terrible idea," but we gave it to him anyway because we didn't prepare a separate meal for him. But most of the stats hold true regardless of what we feed him, it's just not always quite this messy.

I'm here, I promise

I've been so bad about posting lately that now I feel pressure to make my grand return to the blog really pithy or at least amusing. I don't really have either. But I figured that was no excuse to keep ignoring this public diary of mine, so I'll just post an update.

Let's see, since last time I posted we went to the beach ... in Delaware. Who knew that Delaware was so nice? Our neighbor's parents own a former B&B in Rehoboth Beach. Awesome backyard with outdoor kitchen, one short block from the beach, and they cooked for us all weekend. My great friend from LSU, Christine, and her husband and baby drove up from their home in Arlington, VA to meet us there. Great, great weekend. Hard to leave. We came dangerously close to returning home with another pet -- a hermit crab in a brightly painted shell -- but then remembered that with 2 kids and 2 pets (and our upstairs neighbors' pug, who we're keeping for the weekend again) we already have enough mouths to feed and s*** to clean up and don't need another living creature in the mix, even if it is just a hermit crab. Close call.




Brian's parents and his oldest nephew, Daniel, came to visit last weekend. Daniel wanted to see a Yankees game for his 12th birthday, so he got to spend a wide-eyed weekend doing all the NYC touristy stuff. We joined them for the Yankees game (so fun, even though the Yankees lost -- good thing I don't care), a Statue of Liberty outing, and a couple meals. It was really cool to see Daniel be exposed to things he has never seen before (his first plane ride, first big city, etc.), and probably become a Yankees fan for life because his Papa took him to a game in "the house that Ruth built" when he was 12 years old. He was so awe-struck that it made me really appreciate the city and our opportunity here, even if it's not our permanent home.





Work has been NUTS. We're understaffed and new business keeps coming in. I suppose that's a good problem in this economy, though. So far this week I've managed a client announcement, a new business presentation, a 2-hour client "check in" (which turned out to be less scary than it sounded), while keeping my existing clients running and happy. Wouldn't be so bad if we had another person or two helping out -- that's actually a pretty typical week -- but it's a lot to stay on top of and I can't shake the I'm-forgetting-something-really-important feeling.

Our car got broken into, which sucked. They took our GPS unit, and that's clearly all they wanted. It was in the glove compartment and they took the time to find it, make sure they had the right charger for it (left our phone chargers), and removed the base from the windshield. And left our car open in the rain. A tip to car breaker-inners: if you're going to break into a car, at least do it on a night that it's not raining. C'mon. Use your manners.

Dylan gave me a nose bleed this morning with a head-butt to the face. That was awesome. Kelsie apparently thinks she's in the running for Mother of the Year. She has taken it upon herself to discipline Dylan and take things from him that she deems inappropriate.

In the meantime, we're trying to do important things, like go green (under the theory that small changes can make a difference, we're trying to be a little nicer to the environment), save money on groceries (I'm not exaggerating when I say our grocery bills have almost doubled just in the 10 months that we've lived here), figure out our future, turn our million dollar ideas into ... well ... a million dollars, relax a little, get enough sleep, get some exercise (Brian's doing well on that, me not so much), teach the kids to be respectful and independent, keep our apartment clean (how is it that this is our biggest challenge?), stay in touch with friends ...

At least we're never bored. Saints play tonight. Go Saints!!!!

Exercising

Just got my exercise for the day -- drove the car around the block to find a new parking spot that's not on the street cleaning side of the street. Then walked ALL the way back inside and sat at my desk again. Phew. I feel great.

That's my smart ass way of admitting how pathetically out of shape I am these days. Gotta work on that. At least lifting kids keeps my upper body fairly strong. But as I sit here I have a sweatshirt rolled up behind my lower back because it is killing me, and I can almost feel my thighs getting mushier. The other day Kelsie told me my body was "wiggly." Which I presume means jiggly since I wasn't doing any kind of a wiggle dance move at the time.

I'm too young for this. (and yes, I recognize that just yesterday I posted an article about my 72 year old mom tap dancing and performing for exercise)

My dancing mom

My tap-dancing, musical-performing mom was featured in the Dallas Morning News today. For some reason Blogger has never let me add hyperlinks (grrr) so I pasted the article below...

Grandmother keeps fit by dancing - sometimes with teens

By NANCY CHURNIN / The Dallas Morning News
nchurnin@dallasnews.com

Genell Kelso has never liked to do what we usually think of as exercise.


Genell Kelso, 72, is taking a Dallas Summer Musicals dance class with teens including Brooks Vickery, 13 (left), and Katie Kelley, 14.

But the 72-year-old breast cancer survivor and Dallas grandmother of four keeps fit by doing what she likes to do: performing.

This month, she signed up for a song-and-dance class at Dallas Summer Musicals, a lone septuagenarian in a sea of teens.

When her application for the program came in, the DSM School of Musical Theatre's new director, Kevin Cook, thought it might be a mistake. Ms. Kelso received a call at home asking whether she knew that she would be the only one of her age in the class.

"I said, 'Yes, but I will keep up as best I can,' " she recalls during a lunchtime break in the workshop. "I said I hoped I would be able to live through it. But I figure I will because I'm too pinchpenny to drop out."

That was good enough for Mr. Cook. And on the second day of class, Lori Woods Smith, who has choreographed for the DSM School of Musical Theatre classes for 11 years, said that while she has never had a student of Ms. Kelso's age, she hasn't treated her differently.

"She did a great job," Ms. Woods Smith said after the morning session. "She has a great attitude."

The American College of Sports Medicine advises aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities for healthy aging. Among the recommendations for people over 65 is moderately intense aerobic exercise 30 minutes a day, five days a week. Singing "Toledo Surprise" while dancing the Charleston from The Drowsy Chaperone, as Ms. Kelso did on her second day of class, seems to fit the bill.

And one of the great things about what she's doing, as she would be the first to point out, is that anyone can do it. After all, she didn't get serious about dancing until after her first half-century.

El Centro professor

A working mom with three kids, Ms. Kelso was a founding faculty member at El Centro College and a professor there for 35 years. She took tap-dance classes at El Centro in the 1980s. But it wasn't until 1990, when her youngest child was in high school, that she became a founding member of Dallas Tap Dazzlers, a troupe of dancers 50 and older. They will perform in the Spectacular Senior Follies at the Eisemann Center in Richardson Sept. 5-7.

She's trying the musical theater class because she loves musicals and because "when I grow up, I would like to write musical comedies about aging and dying," she says.

Besides, she needs exercise, and walking and jogging bore her.

"What fun is it being on a hot sidewalk by yourself," she says, "when you can be in front of an audience with music and applause?"

The class will culminate in a free showcase called Curtain Up! that is open to the public at The Majestic Theater on Saturday. Along with the song from The Drowsy Chaperone and another from Jersey Boys, Ms. Kelso is to perform "Bop to the Top" from High School Musical with a hip-hop step.

Having fun

Ms. Kelso feels her age when she's sitting on the floor and has to get up quickly. But that's OK, she says. She's learned to laugh at herself. And she's having fun. Which is why this is her one piece of advice for others:

"Just get out of the chair and get it going," she says. "The more you do, the more you're able to do."

Make it a double

There are some days that I am very proud of being able to juggle working around the clock with raising two kids. Then there are all the other days.

I recently had one of those out of body experiences where you see yourself from above. I was holding my laptop in one hand and wiping down the kitchen counter with the other. The series of events that led to that particular maneuver are irrelevant. Viewing myself that way made me laugh out loud. Should anyone really be thinking about writing messaging for a client and cleaning up lunch box messes at the same time? Because I do that juggling act for about 15 hours a day.

Then the weekend comes and we spend so much energy trying to keep up with the kids that by the end of it we need a weekend to recover from the weekend! Today Dylan is really perfecting his hair-pulling technique. Even managed to pull Kelsie to the ground by her hair. Impressive. It has taken me an hour just to write this because I have stopped repeatedly to separate them, get the light bulb out of Dylan's hand (don't ask), wrap Kelsie's hair in a bandana so Dylan can't pull it, refill milk cups, fix a snack, change a diaper, help with the potty, catch a chair just before it gets pulled to the ground, etc. Next interruption (I hope) will be a coffee break for mommy. Or a tequila break. Either way.

We've got this whole parenting thing figured out

When the kids act up ....



Okay, for the record, it was Kelsie's idea and she jumped in while my back was turned. Then Dylan followed her. See, they were happy ...



That is the kennel of Gigi, the pug from upstairs that we're keeping for the week. Here's the snoring butterball herself ...

My life in bullets

I've been struggling to find time (and mental energy) to blog lately, so here's a quick update.

* Kelsie is transforming into a teenager before our eyes. She's suddenly tall and thin (but her squeezable cheeks are still holding out) and she has so much attitude that I wonder if she's already hitting puberty. The other day she performed her first stomp-to-her-room-and-slam-the-door act to demonstrate that she was mad at me. And only me. She made a point to interact with Daddy while intentionally ignoring me.

* She is in summer school now. Remember when that used to be a bad thing? This is more like regular school with some field trips thrown in. She's thrilled to get to go on a school bus next week. She told Brian, "I'm going to go on a school bus, Daddy. Geez."

* Dylan has discovered the joys of standing on anything he can. That includes grocery carts (despite being strapped in), rocking chairs (even though it won't hold still for him), and beds (and he can bounce up there too!).

* If anyone has suggestions on how to get him to stop throwing his food, I'm all ears. The dog is getting fat.

* Dylan tackled Kelsie and took her to the ground last night. Brian's response: "I know he shouldn't do that, but it was just so fundamentally correct. He threw his shoulder into her mid-section, wrapped her up and took her down! I'm just so proud. We have to find a pee wee football league. He could take down 20-month olds."

* "Shut up your mouth," said Kelsie.

* On the positive side, she continues to amaze us with her nurturing instincts. She just adores Dylan. And she's eagerly trying to learn to read. The other day she was cutting pictures out of a magazine and cut out the word MOM, gave it to me and told me it said mom. She is really into artwork lately, but she calls it work. She tells us she has an important appointment and then will sit at the table coloring and cutting and muttering things like, "work, work, work" or "I wish I could come sit on your lap but I have too much work to do."

* And Dylan gives the best hugs and is starting to give (slobbery) kisses upon request. Almost makes up for the determined look in his eye right before he does something wrong. Almost.

* We went to DC last weekend for 4th of July and met Karen (sister), Steve (brother-in-law), Chris (nephew who is as tall as his dad now) and Rachel (niece) there. Very fun. Except for Dylan's refusal to sleep the first night, his teething, and the rain shower that threatened to ruin the fireworks. But it all worked out. We even caught the kids in a cute and very rare moment of both of them holding still at the same time:

This picture was taken at the restaurant where we met Christine Salvo (aka Tina T) and family, and the kids were wild enough that Christine and Steve probably vowed never to have another.

* I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting right now.

So there you have it. My life in bullets.

Tonight's quote

"Mommy, I want you to change your mind and make a deal with me."

My 4-year old is destined to be a lawyer. Or in the mafia.

Say Cheese!

Here's what happens when you expect 4 kids to sit still for a picture after 3 of them have been swimming and fighting over bubbles, and the 4th is only 4 months old ...






We had a great time seeing Andrea, Ed, baby Ana(!), and Andrea's sister and her family (Juliana, Matt, Ella) in Lambertville, NJ. Even if these pictures lead you to believe otherwise.

If you're happy and you know it ....

People keep commenting on how happy Dylan is. Easy for them to say -- they don't see the grumpy side that we do. But in general, I suppose they're right. He's our happy little dude. Here's proof.

Cowgirl in the city

This was at the Kiddiepalooza festival in Hoboken. That's the Hudson River and Manhattan in the background.

Los Ninos Habla Espanol

Kelsie often tells us that she can speak Spanish. I've even heard her say that to people whose primary language is Spanish, which turns out to be a little embarrassing when she then tells them, "Gracias! That means hello."

But she does know (and usually understands the meaning of) a handful of Spanish words and phrases -- hola, gracias, rojo, azul, buenas dias, etc. But she is far from fluent. The other day I was trying to tell her that the Spanish word for Spanish is Espanol. She kept saying, "yes, but what does it MEAN in Spanish?"

So, as she continues to brag and we continue to encourage her to learn more Spanish words, Dylan sneaks up from behind with what is apparently a pretty good understanding of the Spanish language.

His teacher, Julia, told Brian this story this morning. Yesterday at daycare Julia told another teacher in Spanish that it was time to wake up Giovanni. Dylan said, "'Banni?" and pointed at Giovanni's crib. So Julia responded, in Spanish, "yes, let's go wake up Giovanni" and watched as Dylan walked to Giovanni's crib and banged on the side of it saying, "'Banni, 'banni!"

How cool is that? So, maybe all his gibberish actually means something in Spanish. Now we need to hire a translator to help us communicate with him, and a handy man to follow him around and repair the messes he leaves in his wake. This kid is expensive.

WLKOM HOMM MOMMY

This is the Welcome Home card Kelsie made for me when I was in SF. She sounded out the words by herself and wrote them. Isn't this sweet?



Notice the picture of me on the cover with the huge red hair!

She had a hard time while I was gone this time. She's usually a trooper and behaves herself perfectly for Brian whenever I leave town, but this time was different. Not sure why. She was very tearful the day before I got back. Then the day I returned she was incredibly clingy. I went to the Fathers Day party at her school in Brian's place (he had been leaving work early every day to pick up the kids while I was out of town, so he couldn't take the afternoon off to go to this event, unfortunately) and she never wanted to leave my lap. She's usually a little social butterfly but not that day. But on the plus side, I got tons of great hugs that day!

The Kissing Hand

I'm going to San Francisco tomorrow for work, so for Kelsie's bedtime story we read The Kissing Hand. It's about a raccoon who doesn't want to go to school and be without his mommy, so she gives him a kissing hand -- she kisses the palm of his hand so that when he misses her he holds his hand to his cheek and it's like she's kissing him. Sweet book.

So, I read that tonight and then Kelsie and I gave each other kissing hands to use when we miss each other this week. Then I gave her the book to flip through in her bed -- like she does every night -- and she told me she wanted me to have it instead so I could take it with me on my trip.

Awwww. It made me cry! So, now I have one more thing to pack, but that's okay.

She's lying now -- we're so proud

I know that lying requires a lot of cognitive development to be able to fabricate a story, keep it separate from the truth, etc. So, maybe I should be a little proud that Kelsie told her first true lie. But I'm not really.

She was sitting in the shopping cart, holding some Hello Kitty sunglasses that I told her we were not going to buy. When I went to get them from her to put them back, they were gone. Knowing that she had hidden them in my bag I asked her where they were and she told me she put them back on the shelf. I asked her how she did that when she had been in the cart all along and she looked me right in the eye and explained that she got out of the cart, walked to the shelf, put the sunglasses away, then got back into the cart. Kind of a complicated lie for a first timer. Sigh.

Maybe I should be most disappointed in how many holes there were in her story. She needs a little practice at this whole lying thing.

The teenage years should be a ball.

Simon Says ...

"Simon Says .... poop your pants!"
- Kelsie Pierce

My first gay wedding!!!

As you may have heard, California recently lifted the ban on gay weddings. So after a 10-year courtship our good friends, Dave and Richard, are getting married! Yay! We got the save the date card today.

Congratulations to Dave and Richard!!!!

Our life as we know it is over

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It's official. Dylan's a walker. That means the path of destruction he leaves behind as a crawler is about to double in size and intensity. Oh, and he also likes to climb. It may be time to pad the walls.

Oh, so that's what nice weather feels like

When we moved to the northeast we fully expected to deal with the shock of our coldest winter we've experienced. I'm proud to say we now truly understand the term "ass crack cold" (given to me by my friend Amy), which is when you can actually feel that your ass crack is freezing. I'm also proud to say we survived that just fine, ass cracks still in tact. What we were not prepared for is the length of the winter. I mean, it's the end of May and it is just now getting consistently warm. That's a relative term -- today's high is 74 degrees, but tonight's low is 55. Still, I finally feel confident putting our winter coats, scarves and clothes away ... now that we're almost halfway through the year.

Anyway, Memorial Day weekend was the most amazing weather -- clear skies, almost 80 degrees, beautiful. So we packed up and took a day trip to the Jersey Shore! In less than 1.5 hours, we were in Point Pleasant, NJ, a nice beach town that looks like it belongs in a 1950s movie, complete with a touristy boardwalk and quiet, clean residential streets that look like everyone on the block knows each other.

We had a great time at the beach, although the water was too cold to get in. Dylan didn't much like the feel of the sand, which means he actually stayed put(!) on our blanket, shoving fruit into his mouth by the handful and throwing beach toys only to discover sadly that they wound up out of his reach. Kelsie, on the other hand, loved playing in the sand and finding shells.



Once we got tired of the beach we headed to the boardwalk where Kelsie rode a bunch of rides and we all had corn dogs. Back in car, home by 8:30pm. So glad to know how easy and fun that was. We'll definitely be making more trips there this summer.



Next day we outfitted our redneck backyard with patio furniture and a fire bowl, and had a lovely outdoor dinner and wine by the fire. Redneck b/c we haven't yet laid grass or fixed the fence so we've got semi-nice stuff sitting on a dirt ground next to a shoddy chain link fence. Goes nicely with our upstairs neighbor's redneck roof deck, decorated with Florida Gators patio furniture, a baby pool and a speaker that blares country music. Yes, we southerners are fitting right in here in New Jersey.

P.S. - I challenge you to find a piece of writing that uses the term "ass crack" more than this one.

Thank God for girl trips

Last weekend was the annual LSU girls trip to Destin, FL. We had 12 girls this year and about 12x the amount of alcohol and food that would be considered "healthy" according to "experts." But that's okay because we worked it off by sitting by the pool and/or beach, and we broke an occasional sweat by dancing to Thriller (props to Critter for bringing the 25th Anniversary DVD ... yes, it's 25 years old).

Sometimes these trips are very restful. This one was not. The most childish of us never went to sleep before 3am. We regressed to our college days, and loved every minute of it.

I hate to say it, but I thoroughly enjoyed being kid-free and mostly responsibility-free for a few days. I even caught myself cursing under my breath at the noisy kids upstairs for waking me up at 10am.

A few of my favorite things:
Pizza rolls. Mudslides. Splotchy sunburns. Cougars. Jamaica. Flavor Flav. "These shoes aren't made for bull riding." Tweeners. Cookie cake. "Write that down." Amanda jumping the fence. Crazy lady jumping the fence. C.D. corners.
(how embarrassing that most of the things I want to add to this list aren't PG - man, we really did regress)

To any of the girls reading this, I love y'all! I'm so thankful to have such a smart, successful, warm, loyal group of friends and I'm a better person for knowing each of you. Honestly.

Now it's back to real life ... so far since my return 3 of the 4 of us have gotten a stomach bug and my work world got turned upside down by the departure of my closest colleague. Sigh.

Dylan at his finest

I realize I haven't posted about Dylan in a while, so lest you think I forgot about our little wrecking ball, here he is at his finest (make sure your volume is up).

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Other Dylan updates:
- His newest words are hola and gracias, thanks to his wonderful teacher, Julia (pronounced Hulia) who doesn't speak much English. He absolutely adores her and I think he's rubbing it in our face by choosing to speak Spanish words instead of the words we're trying to teach him.

- He still refuses to walk, even though I KNOW he can do it. He's just lazy/stubborn/chicken.

- He has developed a discerning palette for crayons and markers, and Kelsie has a knack for leaving hers out and unattended. So we often catch him with a Periwinkle tongue or Burnt Sienna teeth. Good thing they're non-toxic.

- He is all boy. Where Kelsie would acquaint herself to something new by examining it closely, Dylan will taste it and then throw it as far as he can. He crawls with full force and has no qualms about running into things, and he prefers everything within his reach to be tossed on the floor and kicked around.

And man, he is demanding!

Young love is rough

"I'm not going to marry you anymore because you're only three," said Kelsie to her good friend Aryan, who is 8 days younger than Kelsie.

The birthday party

Sometimes I forget how literal you have to be with Kelsie. We had her party on Saturday, 3 days after her actual birthday. So every time someone would wish her happy birthday, instead of saying thank you she'd say "No, it is not my birthday. It's just my party."

Anyway, the music and puppet show was great -- he involved the kids in a treasure hunt that included pretending to swim in the ocean (complete with a bubble machine to set the mood), chasing a monkey puppet, finding mardi gras beads, magic tricks, singing songs, etc. And it was funny -- the adults were entertained, too, which was a nice surprise -- but I think a lot of it was us laughing at Kelsie.

The premise of the show was that a witch puppet named Grizabella was supposed to present the birthday crown to Kelsie but she decided she was going to keep it for herself, so the kids had to go through a series of adventures to find it. Well, Kelsie was determined to get that crown! She even tried to take it from the witch puppet. At one point the performer said they needed to trade something for the crown (of course he had something planned for that) and Kelsie, panicked, jumped up and said "TAKE MY WATCH!!" and tried to give her new watch to the puppet in exchange for the crown.

You'll see in the video that the performer had to get Kelsie and the other kids to back off from time to time!


Victorious with her crown:


Dylan enjoying the show, with a little help from Aunt Betsy:

Rock star

Here's one to file under "What Were We Thinking?" Kelsie's main birthday present was a pink guitar. How cool is she ...




Check out Brian trying to teach her how to play ... I hope the humor in that is not lost on his friends and family.

Birthday Girl!

Kelsie is 4 today!! She was too excited to fall asleep last night. We kept hearing her in her bed singing Happy Birthday over and over again to various friends and then to "me, me, me, me, me, me ..."

We brought some donuts to her school this morning and gave Mardi Gras beads to each of her classmates. She's the one with the giant pink birthday crown.




Her real birthday party is this Saturday. It will be a Mardi Gras-themed music and puppet show at a bookstore in Hoboken, NJ. All her school friends know that she is from Louisiana, so we decided to run with that theme. Should be fun. I'll post pictures.

The problem with smart kids

... is that they are sometimes right. I've mentioned before that Kelsie has been arguing a lot lately so we're working hard to correct that. Well, yesterday she was arguing that our house was on a different street and I was explaining why she was wrong. We went back and forth a couple times until I told her that she was arguing and she needed to stop. So she thought about it for a minute and then said, "but Mommy, you were arguing too."

Dammit. She's right.

Now what?

Oh Kelsie. Last night she was having trouble falling asleep and kept calling for us. I finally gave in and went to check on her to find this ...



She was oh so proud of herself for putting dots on her forehead. We tried our best to get it off but she went to school this morning looking like she had just gotten a bad chemical peel.

What do we do with her??!! This isn't exactly out of character lately. She is definitely trying to establish her own set of rules. If we tell her "no" she sees that as a starting point for negotiations (and she's a pretty good negotiator for a 3-year-old ... scary). So we are having some serious battles of wills these days. And it doesn't help that Dylan eggs her on by laughing at everything she does, especially after we've told her not to do it. They are already teaming up against us!

Kelsie's first haircut

She made it almost four years without a haircut. When her hair is wet it reaches the small of her back. But the curls make it appear much shorter when it's dry. Still, after four years it really needed some attention. So we had a girl day getting our hair cut today.

I was afraid that if they cut it too short it would poof up Orphan Annie-style, so they just gave it a trim. But she was a trooper and held as still as a 3 year old possibly could in that seat.


The pictures of me getting my hair cut just aren't as cute.

Happy birthday, Dylan - Part 2

Ta da! Here's the first birthday picture. I think the cake confused him more than anything. He kept digging into it and then trying to get the icing off of his hands.

When Dylan and I went to pick Kelsie up from school on his birthday, her whole class was singing happy birthday to him, and they had each made him a birthday picture. It was unbelievably cute. Her friends couldn't wait to give him their pictures. And he just sat there with a big smile on his face trying to figure out why the big kids were so excited to see him.

Happy birthday, Dylan!!

Dylan is a year old! What??!! How did that happen so fast? I guess when you throw a cross-country move into that first year it kind of makes time sneak up on you. We can't believe he's one already. Seems like we should have had more of a say in this. But regardless, here we are with a one-year-old and an almost-four-year-old.

Dylan is clueless, of course. To him it's just another day of "cwap cwapping," waving, making fart noises, and trying to walk while destroying everything in his path. Kelsie, on the other hand, is very excited about his birthday, as are her teachers. "Baby Dylan" is an honorary member of Kelsie's school, even though he's too young to attend yet. They even have his birthday on their school calendar and have planned for her to make him some sort of a birthday present for her art project today.

So, we're keeping things pretty low key. Kelsie will get to pick out a birthday present for him (should be interesting), we're going out for a fun family dinner tonight, Betsy and Andrew are gonna come hang out tomorrow, etc.

We'll be sure to take the obligatory picture of cake smeared all over his face.